Turned Earth: May 2006 Archives

Garden Events for Summer

By Michael O'Connell on May 24, 2006 11:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Summer is fast approaching, and with it an interesting palette of garden events. As usual Pacific Horticulture Magazine has a great list of what is happening in Northern California.

Garden Design Online has a great listing of events for the East coast.

A few interesting items from the list in the next couple months are:

May 20: Training & Taming Your Espalier, workshop with Alex Fernandez, 9:30 to 11:30 am, Filoli. Fee $35; pre-registration required.

May 21: Gardening Successfully with Oak Woodland and Chaparral Plants, a class with Maggie Cutler and Glenn Keator, 10 am to 4 pm, Friends of the Regional Parks Botanic Garden at the Cutler Ranch in Livermore. Fee $50; pre-registration required at 510/531-8122, www.nativeplants.org.

May 28: Myco-Dynamic Gardening, an intermediate workshop with Mia Rose and Patrick Garretson, Solar Living Institute. Fee $120; pre-registration required.

June 3: Sick Plant Clinic, with Robert Raabe, 9 am to noon, UC Botanical Garden at Berkeley.

June 4: Outside the Bungalow: America's Arts & Crafts Garden, class with Paul Duchscherer,2 to 4 pm, Gamble Garden Center. Fee $25; pre-registration required.

June 10: Saturday Plant Sale, featuring perennials, 10 am to 1 pm at the nursery, San Francisco Botanical Garden Society.

June 10: A Sense of Place: Homes & Gardens in Historic Inverness, a tour of eight private homes and gardens, 10 am to 4 pm, sponsored by the Inverness Garden Club, www.invernessgardens.org. Tickets $40; pre-registration suggested.

June 15: The Cornerstone Garden Lecture Series, a garden design talk followed by a reception in the Gardens, 3 to 7 pm, sponsored by the Garden Conservancy at Cornerstone Festival of Gardens, 23570 Highway 121, outside the town of Sonoma. Call 415/561-7895 for information and registration; pre-registration recommended.

June 19: Luscious Stonework for Gardens, lecture with Jeffrey Bales, 7:15 pm, California Horticultural Society.

Striking Images from Germany's Duisberg Nord

By Michael O'Connell on May 23, 2006 3:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Duisburg Nord is one of Germany's groundbreaking parks that took an old steel production district and transformed it into a park. The juxtaposition of old hulking rusted equipment and new park features make for an unique experience.

An overview from their website:
If you are looking for recreation, an exciting experience, education or fun, the Duisburg-Nord Country Park is all you need. At a site where the blast furnace heat was almost unbearable you can now cool down and relax. Young trees and old furnaces overlook a park for everybody and everything - and even more, as you can simply climb to the roof of the Ruhr and enjoy the view, experience top events live in a factory building or track regional history in a world of steel. Welcome to Park Land without frontiers.

This park has served as an interesting model for other post-industrial cities looking to redevelop their old manufacturing areas.

For More Images:
Visit our Great Garden and Parks Portfolio
Details from Gardenvisit
Land + Living Article

Tiburon Project- Box Trees

By Michael O'Connell on May 9, 2006 9:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here is an image of two 48" box Mayten trees (that can be seen making it off the truck in this post). These trees have a great weeping habit, similar to a Willow, but with less mess and smaller scale suited for residential applications. These large box trees make a great signature statement at the front of the residence.

Rhododendrons from the Mendocino Botanical Gardens

By Michael O'Connell on May 4, 2006 3:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here are photographs of beautiful spring rhodys from a recent trip to the Mendocino Botanical Gardens. The cool coast air and moist climate make for beautiful specimens. One other interesting specimen was a Coast Redwood at the gardens. Redwoods do not grow well when exposed to salt air, and as a result don't thrive on the coast.